Thursday, January 26, 2012

Like many researchers, I use a Canoscan LIDE 200 to scan archival records where it's allowed. It's small (easily fits into my messenger bag next to my computer), lightweight (3.5 lbs), inexpensive (currently $75 on Amazon), convenient (connects to my computer with a USB cable), and it works great.

The challenge has been scanning tri-folded documents from a hundred years ago. It's impossible to flatten them so it's hard to keep them straight while closing the scanner cover. I've finally found a solution.

A few weeks ago I had the clerk at my local hardware store cut a piece of thin plexiglass slightly smaller than the glass on the scanning bed. There's a small lip around the scanning glass and when I set the plexiglass against it the plexiglass becomes a see-through cover. I put the paper on the glass, straighten it, bring the plexiglass down on the page, and make sure the paper underneath is straight. Then I close the actual cover and scan. The plexiglass doesn't seem to affect the image quality.

And what about stapled tri-fold documents that can't be unfastened? It's not always possible to use the plexiglass in those cases, but a double-thick file folder or piece of poster board used in place of the stiff scanner cover can make it easier to line up those documents for scanning.

First things first. What are the birth registers and how were they created? The short answer is that I don't know for sure. But, I have a guess that pertains to the books that were organized into alphabetical sections by month and year. (The earliest books are arranged differently.) Many early births went unrecorded, but when a record was created, I believe a doctor or midwife, or another person who attended the birth, filled out a birth certificate form and returned it to the county clerk's office.

At that point, I think the county copied the information from the birth certificate into a birth register and assigned a certificate number based on the line number for the entry. The registers would have provided a systematic way for assigning certificate numbers while serving as a detailed, chronological index to the actual records.

Example birth register page from 1913. (Year is recorded onthe right-hand page but I've omitted that image to save space.)
Notice that the lines were pre-numbered and that
the writing is consistent up to the last few entries.

Let's look at an example page from a register that shows W.P.A. entries. Notice that the last six entries are in different handwriting. What's unique about them?

Register: Acerra (regular writing)
Certificate: 608 Maria Acerra, record not dated
Comment: This was probably the last entry made in March of 1913

Register: Altiger (dark pen)
Certificate: 609 Edward Atiger, record dated March 29, 1927
Comment: This certificate was signed by a doctor many years after the birth

Register: Arizzi (dark pen)
Certificate: 610 Laura Arizzi, record dated April 1, 1929 (regular form)
Comment: This certificate was signed by the father many years after the birth

Register: Taken Adler (dark pen)
Certificate: 611 George Adler, record dated March 18, 1929 (later form)
Comment: This certificate was signed by a doctor many years after the birth

Register: Taken WPA
Certificate: 612 Zosfia Andzejewska, no date (regular form)
Comment: This certificate appears to be from 1913 but the certificate number has been changed

Register: Taken WPA
Certificate: 613 John Adams, record dated March 30, 1914 (regular form)
Comment: This certificate was signed by a doctor in 1914 and the certificate number has been changed

Register: Anderson "Late Entry"
Certificate: 614 Douglas Anderson, record dated March 7, 1941
Comment: This certificate was "signed" by the father but the name is actually typed

The two W. P. A. entries come after births reported in the 1920s and before a birth reported in 1941. The Works Progress Administration was active in the 1930s and I think it's safe to assume that these entries were made by W. P. A workers.

So, why were the entries made? Notice that the two W. P. A. certificates had at least one thing in common. The certificate number was changed. It's possible that the workers were moving misfiled records.

The certificate numbers that were changed were low, as I'd expect for an "A" birth early in the year, so I decided to check the birth register for March of 1914 to see if I could find an entry for John Adams. It was there on line 458, just as I'd hoped. It looks like his certificate was originally recorded in the 1914 register and assigned a certificate number from there but that's misleading because he was really born in 1913. I think the W. P. A. workers were correcting that error and I think it's likely a bit of detective work would also locate a register entry for Zosfia Andzejewska.

1914 birth register page showing entry for John Adams on line 458.

Continuation of John Adams entry showing year as 1914.

The curious thing to me is that the W. P. A. didn't record the names in the registers when they fixed errors and that they didn't make notations by the original register entries to document the certificate number changes. If I had located the birth register entry for John Adams in 1914 and used the year and line number there to search for his birth certificate on microfilm, I would have come up empty-handed.

Two things come to mind as I bring this post to a close.

1) Thing aren't always as they would seem. Looking at the birth register entry for John Adams, it would make no sense to say that he was born in 1913, and yet ... Notice, though, that the register probably isn't a primary source.

2) I am grateful for the efforts of the countless individuals who have volunteered indexing time to make Chicago records accessible through FamilySearch.

Thursday, January 05, 2012

When I look at birth certificates, I focus on names and dates and
places--information I can add to a family tree. When I look at hospital
records, I come face to face with the realities of giving birth. I think
the records from the Chicago Lying-In Hospital and its satellite
clinics provide fascinating and important family history details and I
believe they merit a closer look.

These hospital books document services provided by four
clinics connected to Dr. Joseph Bolivar DeLee, the physician who founded
the Chicago Lying-In Dispensary
at Maxwell Street and Newberry Avenue in 1895. Dr. DeLee was interested
in improving birthing conditions and his clinics offered care to needy women while providing training opportunities for
doctors and nurses in the emerging field of obstetrics. The
primary clinic was Maxwell Station but others included Northwest
Station, Stockyards Station, and the Chicago Maternity Center. The history of the Lying-In Hospital intertwines with other Chicago medical institutions and some related historical records, 1913-1943 can be found in the University of Chicago Library's Special Collections Research Center. Photos can be found here.

There are three types of clinic records
available on the 14 microfilms--application books, birth books, and
case books--and I will take a look at each of them in turn.

Application Books

Application books are available on 11 microfilms (1315895 to 1315905) and
the FHLC identifies them by volume number and year range. However, some
years are covered by more than one book (because the books are from
different clinics) so it would be hard to know which film(s) to view
without more information. I've created a key which can be viewed as a
PDF here. The application books cover the following clinics:

Maxwell Station, Dec
1896 – Jun 1932

Northwest Station, Sep
1903 – Nov 1907

Stockyards Station, Aug
1923 – May 1926

Chicago Maternity
Center, Sep 1932 – Aug 1933

There
are two kinds of application books. The standard books, with the
exception of the first one, have entries made on pre-printed forms. They
are organized by the date of the woman's first visit to the clinic
(births often happened a few months later) and recorded information
generally includes name (either the woman's given name or her
husband's), address, nationality, how the woman was referred to the
clinic, information on previous pregnancies, and expected date of
confinement. If the woman gave birth the birth date, sex, and weight of
the child are noted. Beginning with Vol. 49, the forms asked for the
birthplaces and ages of parents, but sometimes that section was left
blank.

Eight
of the earliest application books log house calls and I've indicated
that on the key linked above. Entries in those books include name,
address, including notations like "1 Floor Rear" to help the doctors
locate apartments, the names of the physicians sent to assist, and the
number of the bag that they carried. Time called, time started, and time
returned are also noted along with the "nature of the case." In some
instances the notes are detailed but if a birth was without
complication, the entry might simply read "normal delivery."

Birth books are available on 3 microfilms
(1315995 to 1315997) and they are included on the key linked above.
It's difficult to determine the exact coverage because the volumes
include birth books, case books, and birth and case books and some
aren't labeled with a clinic name. As a group, they appear to go from
November 1898 through July 1933 with the bulk of them being from the
Maxwell clinic.

Birth Books

The entries are
chronological by birth date and span two pages. Information includes spouse with the
patient's name to the right, for example, "Gold, Sam Tillie," the names of the intern and student assigned
to the patient, an application
number, a case or confinement number, and the diagnosis which usually reads something like "Normal L.O.A. Female 8#."

The birth and case book from February of 1900 gives
detailed instructions for how to determine whether to assign a case or a
confinement number. For example, full confinement cases received a
confinement number, hospital cases received no number, and false alarms,
abortions, midwife cases, postpartum cases, and treated pregnancy cases
received a case number.

The later birth books include
obstetrical terms that were unfamiliar to me. In the example below, the word that begins with "ceph" is "cephalic" which, according to Wikipedia, means the head enters the pelvis first. "Para" refers to "parity,"
the number of times a mother has given birth. Comparing the notation
for one of the births to the information on the corresponding birth certificate, it appears that this
number refers to previous births. In other words a "I" would mean that
the woman was giving birth to a second child. The abbreviations refer to the way the babies are facing. R.O.A., for example, means "right occipito-anterior."

Example: Page from a birth book showing delivery details.

It's possible to use
the application number from a birth book to find the corresponding entry
in the application book and following up in this way provides
additional information, address, for example.

I think it's likely that the
children listed in the birth books had birth certificates created and
those records should be easily accessible at FamilySearch's Illinois, Cook County Birth Certificates, 1878-1922 database.
Conversely, if you've found a birth certificate stamped "Chicago
Lying-In Hospital," it should be easy to find the matching entries in
the application and birth books.

Case Books

The birth book films include four "birth and case" books and five separate
case books. The case book entries cover clinic visits that didn't result
in confinement. Information generally includes names, application
numbers, case numbers, and a diagnosis, "False Alarm," and "Precipitate
Mid wife on case," for example. These books include numerous entries
for miscarriages.

Observations

So, here's what I've learned so far from and about these application, birth, and case books:

If a family had enough resources to pay a doctor, you
probably won't find a birth or clinic visit listed in these records.
For example the Maxwell
Station book for 1900 has a notation that says, "Not case for dispensary – can afford to pay doctor."

Some of the poorest women in Chicago had access to innovative medical
care from the late 1890s forward. Even if a child was born at home, the
birth might have been assisted by a skilled physician.

Many of the entries in the early Maxwell Street books are for Jewish women
from Russia but other neighborhood women used the clinic, too.

The Stockyards Station books list religion. Notations
include things like "Amer Cath," "Amer Prot Col," and Amer Prot" and
this information might prove useful in looking for baptismal records.

Comparing hospital record information with birth
certificate information I notice that there are sometimes minor
variations. Name might be spelled differently, for example.

Sometimes the doctors recorded remarks about the
health of an infant. For example, I saw notations such as "Upper lip
shows imperfect union" and "Birthmark."

Sometimes the doctors were called to the home only to
find they weren't needed. One note said "Met husband who said he had an
other doctor & did not
need us.”

In the 1920s, the Stockyards book begins to mention
payments. Notations include things like "Will try to give $5" and
"$16.50" (I saw amounts ranging from $5 to $20) but some patients are
listed as "Free Care."It's possible that these payments or donations
were used to fund the construction of the new hospital.

What use might these records be? Here are some ideas that come to mind quickly:

Birth
records are available for public searching up through 1922. If you want
quick confirmation of birth without obtaining an actual birth record,
these records might help.

A mother's medical history might provide some interesting insights into the makeup of a family. Was there a medical reason, for example, that there were large gaps between siblings' births?

If you've read to this point and find yourself
thinking, "I wonder if my ancestor appears in the records?" post a
comment. I'll gladly take a look at the records, time permitting, for
the first person to ask.
____________________________

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About Me

I have a bachelor's degree in Japanese and a master's degree in reading instruction.
I'm a co-founder of Genlighten.com and I provide customer support for the site. I also offered research services in Chicago for 10 years focused on helping people locate genealogical records for Chicago and Cook County research.
If I'm not doing something genealogy-related, I'm probably playing the banjo or fiddle. I discovered old-time music in 2008 and it's become a very happy part of my life.